ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS AND FROM DRAWINGS BY ERIC PAPE AND
HARRY FENN
The first night of "Olivia" at the Lyceum was about the only
_comfortable_ first night that I have ever had! I was familiar with
the part, and two of the cast, Terriss and Norman Forbes, were the
same as at the Court, which made me feel all the more at home. Henry
left a great deal of the stage-management to us, for he knew that he
could not improve on Mr. Hare's production. Only he insisted on
altering the last act, and made a bad matter worse. The division into
two scenes wasted time, and nothing was gained by it. _Never_
obstinate, Henry saw his mistake and restored the original end after a
time. It was weak and unsatisfactory, but not pretentious and bad,
like the last act he presented at the first performance.
We took the play too slowly at the Lyceum. That was often a fault
there. Because Henry was slow, the others took their time from him,
and the result was bad.
The lovely scene of the vicarage parlour, in which we used a
harpsichord, and were accused of pedantry for our pains, did not look
so well at the Lyceum as at the Court. The stage was too big for it.
The critics said that I played Olivia better at the Lyceum, but I did
not feel this myself.
At first Henry did not rehearse the Vicar at all well. One day, when
he was stamping his foot very much as if he were Mathias in "The
Bells," my little Edy, who was a terrible child _and_ a wonderful
critic, said:
"Don't go on like that, Henry. Why don't you talk as you do to me and
Teddy? At home you _are_ the Vicar."
The child's frankness did not offend Henry, because it was
illuminating. A blind man had changed his Shylock; a little child
changed his Vicar. When the first night came, he gave a simple,
lovable performance. Many people now understood and liked him as they
had never done before. One of the things I most admired in it was his
sense of the period.
[Illustration: ELLEN TERRY AS "OLIVIA"